After seeing the DIY adapter dongle Tom built, I realize that I'm glad it's him and Andy driving the Ioniq 5 N and not me, because I definitely would have gotten myself stranded after like the first commute stage.
Photography by Tom Suddard and Andy Hollis
By Tom Suddard and Andy Hollis
By day three, the Tire Rack One Lap of America Presented by Grassroots Motorsports was in full swing. Proven when we woke up, stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, and honestly couldn’t remember what city we were in.
Oh, right. We’re in Harrisonville, Missouri, about 30 minutes from a race track nobody’s heard of: Hedge Hollow Raceway. New for this 2025, it now shows up on Apple Maps when you search for it.
Hedge Hollow is a private race track located just south of Kansas City built to world-class standards by a wealthy businessman–mostly for his own personal use. Occasionally, though, he invites other users just to keep the pavement clean and the equipment sharp.
Rather than traditional corner workers, traffic control is done via cameras that can see every inch of the track, with F1-style signal lights to communicate with drivers. A single marshal monitors track activity from a control room nestled in the garage condos along the front straight.
Those garage condos were key to our charging strategy as they include a washer and dryer–which we plugged into with a DIY adapter to keep our charge level topped off between sessions.
At 3.4 miles long, Hedge Hollow has a bit of everything: long straights, rhythmic esses, and significant elevation changes. Turn 1 is especially challenging as it’s wide open. Choose your line through the expanse of grippy pavement, where you can trade off distance for speed, whichever makes the most sense for your situation.
As Siri guided us into the facility, we had plenty of questions about a car we still didn’t really know: our 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. Would it really be able to do a full session at this giant, fast track at full pace? Would it empty its battery in the process? Would we end up sleeping in a big, empty field in the middle of nowhere?
After being conservative at World Wide Technology Raceway while becoming familiar with the car, it was time to fully send our steed. Andy did the morning honors slotting us into 33rd overall, but more importantly in front of our rivals in the Stock Touring class–the BFGoodrich team of Ross Bentley and Ed Gliss in a Civic Type R. They are showcasing the new g-Force Phenom T/A. Stock Touring and Stock GT are parallel classes for unmodified cars, most often entered by manufacturers.
[Burnouts, blisters and the new BFGoodrich Phenom T/A]
Tom drove in the warmer, sunnier afternoon, landing 36th overall and a full eight positions ahead of BFG. We might have picked conservatively when choosing our Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 tires, but they were still working shockingly well as we got them hotter and hotter.
The Pilot Sport 4S’s trademark lack of heat tolerance seems to be completely gone–at least in this OE Porsche version we’re racing on–and they just kept working even as we abused them more and more with the Hyundai’s weight and power.
Speaking of abuse, we ended up stress testing our Ioniq’s battery, too: Andy used a full 30% of a charge during his session, draining the car from 90% to 60%. Our dryer outlet charged the car back to 75% in time for Tom’s session, and he brought the car in at just 42% full.
In most EVs, this would mean a huge degradation in performance as lower voltage is supplemented with higher amperage and higher temperatures. In the Hyundai, though? Lap times stayed nearly identical, and it seemed to produce all 641 horsepower every single lap–unlike other electric competition, the EV Dodge Charger.
The Charger team finished 53rd overall in the morning’s session, dropping further to a 58th place finish in the afternoon. Why? One word: heat. The big Dodge could only do about one lap at Hedge Hollow before overheating and severely limiting power, meaning the team had to drive gently and focus on their battery far more than on their lap times.
After an unscheduled stop to chat with law enforcement the evening before, Andy Smedegard and SuperK once again slotted into the top spot in the morning, this time with David Marcus as runner-up in his 2022 Porsche 911 GT3. TeamPGR’s Andrew DeKoning swooshed the Tesla Model S Plaid into third, a few seconds back.
The afternoon session saw a major shake-up as Marcus won overall in the Porsche, pushing SuperK back to second. Chris Mayfield piloted the Quality Time Racing 2024 Porsche Cayman to third.
Competition runs complete, we loaded the car back up and hit the road for one of our longest transits of the week: 541 miles from Hedge Hollow to NCM Motorsports Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We left Hedge Hollow at about 3:00 p.m., and after a string of perfect charges at 800V units, arrived at our hotel in Bowling Green at 1:15 a.m. Our gas-fueled competition seemed to arrive somewhere around an hour ahead of us, though we were far from the last car in the parking lot.
Next stop? NCM Motorsports Park, the spiritual home of the all-American Chevy V8. We’ll see if we can beat them with a battery.
After seeing the DIY adapter dongle Tom built, I realize that I'm glad it's him and Andy driving the Ioniq 5 N and not me, because I definitely would have gotten myself stranded after like the first commute stage.
Tom said
Our gas-fueled competition seemed to arrive somewhere around an hour ahead of us, though we were far from the last car in the parking lot.
At least one competitor ( possibly two ) who had issues yesterday, ended up driving straight to the track as it opened, not visiting their hotel.
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
Ooof, that’s rough.
Tom Suddard said:
The Charger team finished 53rd overall in the morning’s session, dropping further to a 58th place finish in the afternoon. Why? One word: heat. The big Dodge could only do about one lap at Hedge Hollow before overheating and severely limiting power, meaning the team had to drive gently and focus on their battery far more than on their lap times.
I just realized David Carr is doing all of us a major solid, in case any police departments convert to the new Charger.
If so, it looks like we only need to go fast enough that it takes more than 4 miles for the Charger to catch us, and then it won't be able to. you know... "theoretically"
Are you using N Pedal mode on track at all?
Impressive, is there anything you had to change from your performance driving habits to wrestle the 5N or was it like a glove?
oh to be rich and have your own racetrack
hunter47 said:Impressive, is there anything you had to change from your performance driving habits to wrestle the 5N or was it like a glove?
oh to be rich and have your own racetrack
Tom and Andy can probablt provide some good feedback after spending several days on different tracks with the car—and especially after autocrossing it. But in my limited time on track with the car at the press launch I found it to be really friendly and intuitive. You feel the weight a bit—5000lbs is hard to hide from the laws of physics—but the torque vectoring and the extremely low cg does an exceptional job of making you not feel the height of the car, and minimizing the impact of the weight. The regen braking blends well with the mechanical braking, to the point where you don't really notice it.
Overall the thing handles like a really well-balanced, track-prepped fwd car with a good lsd that somehow manages to get power oversteer on corner exit instead of corner entry.
Good morning, VIR. Just got a few photos from Ken Neher.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Can't wait for the depreciation curve to hit these.
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
HA!!
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